


Let Me Tell You About Homestuck: The Homestuck Fandom

by Madam_Melon_Meow



Series: homestuck meta [2]
Category: Homestuck, homestuck meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29903931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madam_Melon_Meow/pseuds/Madam_Melon_Meow
Summary: an essay about homestuck as a community. written in spring 2020, understandably some of the facts have changed in the year between then and me posting it. thesis is as follows:With a point and click adventure game, two “dating sim” spoof games, a nearly 200,000 word “fanfiction prose” style epilogue, and a bimonthly updating sequel combining prose and traditional Homestuck style, with bonus updates once a month available through Patreon, Homestuck has lived beyond the end of the first comic, and its fanbase, the “Homestuck fandom”, has survived more than a decade immersed in Andrew Hussie’s world. The comic is part of the lifeblood of internet culture, with many memes having a Homestuck ian origin. It is no stretch of the imagination to say Homestuck has spawned its own unique culture, with several different styles of digital performance that new members have to find a place within in order to truly become part of the fandom.
Series: homestuck meta [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2198826
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	Let Me Tell You About Homestuck: The Homestuck Fandom

_Homestuck_ is a webcomic written and illustrated by Andrew Hussie that ran from April 13th, 2009, to April 13th, 2016, with end credits posted on October 25th, 2016. It has 8130 pages, and its intricate plot follows a group of teens who befriend each other online and play a video game together, which destroys life on their home planet and transports them inside the game, but rewards them with the creation of a new universe and possible immortality upon completion. The comic is notoriously confusing to outsiders, to the point where in the online sphere, uttering the phrase “let me tell you about _Homestuck_ ” is enough to send people into a rage or frighten them away. It covers a range of topics, from aliens to old gods, coming of age to alcoholism, the true definition of a hero, the aftermath of abuse, and much more. Though colloquially known as a webcomic, _Homestuck_ breaks boundaries: gifs, flashes, imbedded mini games, extra content hosted on social media, music, password-locked pages, claymation, and a ten minute full color animated youtube video are all examples of the way Andrew Hussie revolutionized storytelling in the internet age. With a point and click adventure game, two “dating sim” spoof games, a nearly 200,000 word “fanfiction prose” style epilogue, and a bimonthly updating sequel combining prose and traditional _Homestuck_ style, with bonus updates once a month available through Patreon, _Homestuck_ has lived beyond the end of the first comic, and its fanbase, the “Homestuck fandom”, has survived more than a decade immersed in Andrew Hussie’s world. The comic is part of the lifeblood of internet culture, with many memes having a _Homestuck_ ian origin. It is no stretch of the imagination to say _Homestuck_ has spawned its own unique culture, with several different styles of digital performance that new members have to find a place within in order to truly become part of the fandom. 

To be a part of the _Homestuck_ fandom does not simply mean one has read _Homestuck_ . Andrew Hussie has been creating peculiar stories in the online sphere since at least 2003, and each of his works builds upon and references the ones before it. As a newcomer enters the _Homestuck_ fandom, they would quickly realize the comic has “inside jokes” that appear preestablished. Someone who has been in the fandom for several years may be familiar with the three previous comics hosted on MSpaintadventures.com, the site where _Homestuck_ started, and the older fans may be able to see references within _Homestuck_ to his even earlier works. Those earlier works are part of Hussie’s “pre-MSPA” era, and while _Homestuck_ was still being written, people would datamine internet archives in order to find the references, some claiming they were the secret to divining the direction of _Homestuck_ ’s next update. 

Now that _Homestuck_ has ended, newer fans may not be so familiar with pre-MSPA works- and MSPA doesn't even exist anymore, having been replaced by Homestuck.com. Newer members of the fandom are more familiar with _Homestuck_ ’s “dubiously canon” _Epilogues_ , the “beyond canon” sequel _Homestuck^2_ , the subscription-based _Homestuck^2_ “bonus updates” on Patreon, or the spin-off games Hiveswap: Act 1, Hiveswap: Friendsim, and Pesterquest. With such a wealth of content to consume, it takes a dedicated individual to seek out all the pieces that are woven into _Homestuck_ , and that's after making it through the rather large comic itself. _Homestuck_ and its follow ups are laden with a diverse array of art styles, heightened by Hussie’s habit of hiring fans to collaborate on the important scenes and provide the music. That diversity expanded for the _Epilogues_ , _Homestuck^2,_ and the games, where some of his ascended fans became official writers helping to flesh out his array of ideas.

The fans of _Homestuck_ do not just passively consume the story. Many fans are writers, artists, musicians, or other creative types. Some of them, known as “ascended fans,” have contributed to _Homestuck_ and its other works. Ascended fans are very important to _Homestuck_ culture. While most mediamakers seek talent from outside their fanbase, Hussie differed from this model. From the beginning, when he realized he wanted musical contributions to his comic, he reached out to fans on the MSPA forums and asked if people wanted to contribute, leading to the creation of the “music team”. This team released 30 official soundtrack albums over the span of _Homestuck_ , all under Hussie’s What Pumpkin Studios label _[footnote 1]_. Some of these individuals also contributed to the three games, and may contribute to future games and _Homestuck^2_ . He also extended the invitation to artists for assistance with his flash pages, and these people became the “art team”. They would contribute to the various flash animations of _Homestuck_ , the art for the various albums, and some of the video games. 

As the sequel, _Homestuck^2_ is the newest and most significant of _Homestuck_ ’s followup works, and Hussie has acquired an all-fan writing team for this project. He made an effort to find fans who were already outputting what he considers amazing fanfictions or meta-essays, and especially women and queer creators. The current head of the writing team, longtime fan Kate Mitchell, informed fans at a podcast liveshow that Hussie provided the outline, the writing team votes on how to proceed on the page by page details, and it all gets his stamp of approval before being posted, thus balancing the diverse voices of the writing team with Hussie’s unique style _[footnote 2]_. This expansion of the power ascended fans hold has caused great contention in the fandom, but many are overjoyed to see such talented fans help shape the future of something so well-loved as _Homestuck_ enters its second decade.

Even those who have not ascended have made great contributions to the fandom. Some writers have turned to the MSPFA website, which hosts fan adventures, spoofing the artistic style of _Homestuck_ . Certain fan adventures, namely _ke$hastuck_ and _heinoustuck,_ became cosplay favorites and generated their own fanart, while the most recent adventure _Vast Error_ has taken on a whole other life, nearly separate from _Homestuck_ and having its own video game spinoff. The tradition of making your own fan adventure is something that many veteran _Homestuck_ fans enjoy.

Other writers take a more scholarly approach, looking deeper into the lore of _Homestuck_ and the symbolism of certain motifs in the panel art, dialogue, and music. These writers, who call their subject “Homestuck meta”, use platforms like Medium, Tumblr, and Twitter to draw literary parallels between certain characters, discuss the implications of character’s upbringings, and much more. They’ve recently taken to podcasts as a way to start a dialogue about important meta topics, and the most famous, the _Perfectly Generic Podcast,_ has guest-hosted many ascended fans, and is run by the woman in charge of _Homestuck^2_ ’s writing team. 

Artists post fanart of the characters, and the artist faction of the fandom is responsible for coining the term “lyricstuck”. Lyricstuck, a practice of drawing a comic of characters in such a way that the lyrics to a particular song fit into the individual panels, spawned in the _Homestuck_ sphere and struck a chord with other fandoms. It has become another popular part of the internet at large, transcending the _Homestuck_ community into other fandoms. Musicians write parodies of pop music and disney songs to fit certain characters and sing them, posting on YouTube or Bandcamp and dubbing the practice “Broadway Homestuck”. Both ascended individuals and everyday fans team up to create fan albums, while others sing original lyrics over actual _Homestuck_ music. 

Another important piece of  _ Homestuck _ culture is the practice of “upd8 culture”. When a new character or outfit appears in the comic, cosplayers compete to be the first to create a new costume and post it. With the updates of the comic never having a regular schedule, the excitement never had a cooldown period, so there was a constant outpouring of content for fans to get creative with or argue about. Artists gleefully proclaim “first” as they post a drawing of a new scene, while dedicated fans have been known to make a new costume while in their hotel during a convention if an update is posted during the event. When  _ Homestuck^2 _ ’s first few panels were posted in October 2019, it took 20 minutes for someone to assemble the new outfit and take photos. The fandom has a rather obsessive passion for all things  _ Homestuck _ , and that passion generates extremes.

One fan ran “Promstuck”, a cosplay dance party for multiple years in Manhattan, with one event drawing 500 attendees and costing $12,000 dollars _[footnote 3]_. One particularly infamous incident involving a _Homestuck_ fan, several bottles of 70% alcohol, grey sharpies, and a hotel bathtub, has become part of _Homestuck_ fandom’s mythology. According to fans who shared a hotel room with the girl, she ended up in the emergency room after attempting to use the sharpies and alcohol to dye her skin grey, to better match the _Homestuck_ alien she was cosplaying _[footnote 4]_. Another infamous moment was when the flash page “[S] Cascade” was posted on October 25, 2011. 1.2 million people attempted to view the page simultaneously, crashing MSPA.com, the MSPA forums, Megaupload, Twitter, Livestream, and Newgrounds as people desperately attempted to view the flash or stream it to those third party platforms _[footnote 5]_.

The  _ Homestuck _ fandom has gone through tremendous change throughout the past eleven years. When the comic first started, the fanbase was primarily composed of those already familiar with Hussie and his earlier works. These earlier works, which were rife with satire, parody, and dark humor, tended to attract the type of internet persona associated with trolling and saying slurs “ironically”. Due to the characters being 13 at the start, they often engaged in inappropriate humor that appealed to actual teens, who congregated to the comic. For the first several hundred pages or so, fans could submit suggestions for how the characters would act, and most of the names of the characters came from fans as well. This novelty of being able to contribute was only heightened when Hussie began to approach and “ascend” certain fans. As the comic went on, the  _ Homestuck _ fanbase exploded, becoming much larger and more vocal than Hussie expected. 

A clear divide became visible between Hussie’s old fan group and those that were pure _Homestuck._ The newer fans expected a depiction of teenagers growing up to include real issues, and when _Homestuck_ mentioned things like trauma, grief, substance abuse, and sexuality, the people looking for “politically incorrect” humor began to grow angry. As the years went on and the comic became more complex, people began to engage in “discourse” over controversial characters, even coining the term “Vriscourse” for all discussion involving the character Vriska Serket. On the official MSPA forums, a specific “quarantine thread” was created for Vriscourse, as otherwise all discussion would quickly devolve into violent arguments over her _[footnote 6]_. Vriscourse became incredibly well known in the online sphere, and to this day Kate Mitchell is attacked for spouting the infamous phrase “Vriska did nothing wrong" _[footnote 7]_.  Vriscourse is such a prominent topic that many people who have never engaged with Homestuck are aware of who Vriska is and her many controversial issues.

While at the height of its popularity, around 2013, many fans engaged in real life meetups, the  _ Homestuck _ fandom has always been mainly online. Between the official  _ Homestuck _ forums, social media sites like tumblr, and a fan made website called “pesterchum” which emulated the chat client used by characters in the comic, Homestuck fans live in a digital world. Everything is online. Fans use video games like Garry’s Mod and Minecraft to create gigantic servers dedicated to  _ Homestuck,  _ with people recreating buildings and locations from  _ Homestuck _ for people to play in. The online chat client Discord is often used for hundreds of fans to gather together and share art, theories, cosplay, and fanfiction. One discord server is run by Kate Mitchell, the hostess of PGenPod and the head writer of  _ Homestuck^2 _ ’s team, and other big-name ascended fans like Pesterquest director Aysha U. Farah, and notable  _ Homestuck _ musician James Roach often make appearances. Mitchell and Farah, who came to Chapel Hill North Carolina for a PGenPod liveshow in October 2019, sent local fans into a frenzy by hiding an Epic brand “beef apple uncured bacon” bar in a local park, following an important _ Homestuck  _ tradition of geocaching snacks. 

Historically, Toblerones are used in this significant part of _Homestuck_ culture, going back to an old photo of Hussie posing with one in a California cave _[footnote 8]_. This image became very popular, because until Hussie took up Instagram recently, the man was notoriously hard to photograph. Recently, Hussie has started creating geocache style adventures, posting obscure Instagram pictures of him and a signed toblerone, sometimes with artwork, and allowing the fans to decode and travel to the location and “win” the prize. On August 25, 2019, one Toblerone winner cast a wish for main character John Egbert to transition and take the name June, and Hussie posted his first tweet in years that “you were the first to find my treasure, and so it will be done” _[footnote 9]_. _Homestuck^2_ writers Mitchell, Farah, and Lalo Hunt spoofed the concept during an October 2019 visit to Chapel Hill, North Carolina for a PGenPod liveshow, hiding a meat bar at a park and posting a photo on twitter. This use of meat, not candy, references the meat/candy dichotomy in the Epilogues, which usd meat to symbolize action oriented plot and candy to symbolize romance-laden wish fulfillment. Within minutes twitter user NihilisticNips had discovered the meat, and they quickly posted photos of the meat behind held and ritually consumed by Vriska cosplayer Sam "MadamMelonMeow" Ann, as well as posing with MadamMelonMeow and two others in Homestuck cosplay with a sign claiming “Vriska did nothing wrong” _[footnote 10]_. NihilisticNips wrote Farah a secret request that will likely be acknowledged as _Homestuck^2_ continues.

The  _ Homestuck  _ fandom is full of creativity and passion, a passion which outlived the  original comic and has spawned a renaissance with the creation of its sequel. With new fans revitalizing upd8 culture and inciting old fans to come crawling from the woodworks, it is clear to fans and onlookers alike that the  _ Homestuck _ fandom is only getting stronger as it enters its second decade. With many ways for fans to express their love of  _ Homestuck _ , a diverse array of fans have found a home within this unique folklore group.

Reference List

Acebots. 2017. “Vriska Quarantine Threads.” Tumblr post, 2017.  https://dregadude.tumblr.com/post/161603108312/veawile-bumush-acebots-acebots-when

Andrew Hussie (@andrewhussie), 2019. “you were the first to find my treasure, and so it will be  done.” Twitter post, August 26, 2019.  https://twitter.com/andrewhussie/status/1165904490844655616?lang=en.

Fanlore, 2016. “the wildest shit that happened in homestuck’s fanbase.” Last modified August  27, 2019.  https://fanlore.org/wiki/The_wildest_shit_that_happened_in_homestuck%E2%80%99s_f anbase.

Kate Mitchell (@gamblignant8), 2020. “ Vriska did nothing wrong and whatever stupid reply  you’re about to make doesnt change that.” Twitter post, March 20, 2020.  https://twitter.com/gamblignant8/status/1240874351580217345.

MSPA Fandom Wiki, 2010. “Hussie with toblerone.jpg.” Last modified June 28, 2010.  https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/File:Hussie_with_toblerone.jpg.

MSPA Fandom Wiki, 2019. “Music Team.” Last modified February 26, 2020.  https://mspaintadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Music_team .

NihilisticNips (@NihilisticNips), 2019. “WHEN HUSSIE ISN'T HOME 🎺 THE CANON  BECOMES OURS 🎺.” Twitter post, October 24, 2019. https://twitter.com/NihilisticNips/status/1187553467268653057.

  
  


Perfectly Generic Wiki, 2019. “Episode 61: Homestuck^2 Live in Chapel Hill.” Last modified  December 29, 2019.  https://perfectlygeneric.fandom.com/wiki/Episode_61:_Homestuck%5E2_Live_in_Chap el_Hill .

Phantom-Shadow. 2013. “Homestuck Sharpie Dying Horror Story.” Tumblr post, 2013.  https://cancerously.tumblr.com/post/19022310014/homestuck-sharpie-dying-horror-story

**Author's Note:**

> FOOTNOTES:  
> 1\. MSPA Wiki, 2020  
> 2\. Perfectly Generic Fandom Wiki, 2019  
> 3\. Fanlore, 2016  
> 4\. Phantom-Shadow on Tumblr, 2013  
> 5\. Fanlore, 2016  
> 6\. Acebots on Tumblr, 2017. One of many discussions referencing the infamous threads  
> 7\. Kate Mitchell on Twitter, 2020.  
> 8\. MSpaintadventures Fandom Wiki, 2010  
> 9\. Andrew Hussie on Twitter, 2019  
> 10\. NihilisticNips on Twitter, 2019


End file.
